Welcome to the first post of my blog. I never thought about making one, but since WIX puts it all together so nice and easy, I just thought why not?
After all, I do have always a lot to say 😊
For my first post, I wanted to share some architecture ideas I have been working on regarding the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (MACBA), who recently had an architecture competition for a museum expansion but has not started construction yet (even if they said it was going to be done by 2023).
If before leaving Spain to New York, 15 years ago, I did my thesis on an extension to the Prado Museum in Madrid, I find it funny that after returning I am dwelling on the MACBA museum extension.
I had some ideas back in 2011, when a first small competition for their Study Center´s ground floor was launched. I then bypassed the brief already, and treated the whole complex of cultural facilities seating on the square (which back then were not all part of MACBA, and now they actually are) and their ground floor connectivity.
The 2021 competition brief addressed precisely what I was foreseeing already in 2011, plus an extension building to house their permanent collection.
So I was building my new website these pasts months, and uploading all my projects, when by chance I came across this MACBA competition winning project (I was totally unaware of it). As it is my predilect area in architecture (cultural programing) I researched a bit this whole business of the extension. And suddenly I had a lot to say!
I decided to go back to my 2011 ideas project and update it to include an extension, as I came to the conclusion that the projects that were presented were not responding to what the museum wanted, simply because the museum itself, in my humble opinion, had given them the wrong guidelines to solve the problems they have.
Last week I finally uploaded on my web site the work I have done (mostly analysis) for the 2021 competition, outlining the path the museum (and the city – since the museum is part private, part publicly own) should take to make this expansion a really successful one.
I am normally this blunt, so please don´t take it the wrong way. After I made the PRA2 I went to Madrid with my project under my arm to show it to Miguel Zugaza (the Prado´s director!) who really loved it and offered me a smoke in his Prado office and kept a copy of the project 😊 to Rafael Moneo (who newly inaugurated the Prado´s expansion I was critiquing with my project), who was not so sympathetic but still very polite and elegant, and despite not wanting to look over my proposal we chat for 20 minutes in his office. I still don´t know what he was so afraid of… And then I wanted to show it to Manolo Borja (then director at the Reina Sofia), who was too busy for me and had me meet with Jesus Carrillo, the programming director.
I say this because I would love they hire me to build the first part of my project 😊 The ideas I had back in 2011 regarding the Richard Meyer building, which are so on point, even more so now with the new expansion plans.
As Richard Sennet says in his book Building and Dwelling, “Cities are in constant need for repair” and he talks about 3 types of repairs - restoration, remediation and reconfiguration. He prefers the third method, RECONFIGURATION, “ which is a rethink of how its elements fit or don´t fit together”.
The current MACBA is in need of repair, before thinking of adding more buildings and program to it.
And my little and modest intervention, does exactly that, I believe -- taking its elements and reconfigure them to solve the problems they have created over the years.
I also think they should ask the winning team (Harquitectes and Christ & Gantenbein) which is really an amazing team, to redesign their expansion project with the new guidelines I have stablished 😊
I am fantastic, isn´t it?? 😊
For my part of the project – the remediation of the Meyer building – I have the perfect partner: the architect Gerard Sullivan, who is the father of my nephew and the project manager of the Lincoln Center renovation in New York. Not bad! That project was precisely a remediation project, but in a much bigger scale.
Gerard, who is an amazing architect, was an associate architect at Diller Scofidio + Renfro and moved to Europe with my sister. Now he lives in Paris and would love to be a partner for this gig.
This of course, might never happen, but it is always worth put it out there! You never know how courageous people can be. Cause I am so certain of my ideas and our talent.
And by the way, The Prado Museum is lately doing some program expansions (what the Prad2 was all about) throughout their campus, in line with the ideas I presented to Zugaza…
So without much further due here is the link to the web site where the project is uploaded and explained in full, the first one in the ARCHITECTURE section:
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